Friday Links

Posted on March 25, 2016 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! Well it’s Good Friday which is not such a happy day in the Christian calendar but also a Bank Holiday so swings and roundabouts…

Where is Ankara’s ‘Je suis’ moment? You might as well ask where Cote d’Ivoire’s is or after this week, Brussels…

Simon Jenkins on the reaction to the Brussels bombings.

The difference between the Democrat and Republican Parties. Yep..

The power of one: how single women are reshaping the political landscape. Interesting…

Adam Johnson, underage sex and nuance. I’ve been having some conversations about this too and I basically come down to, she is a child in law and I am aware there is nuance when 15 year olds have sex but he he was the adult, in fact if she had been 16, he’d still have been the adult and while it wouldn’t have got him a criminal conviction, I still would have thought it was wrong. I have another question though, where in the name of all that’s holy where her parents while she was obsessively following a 28 year old footballer on social media and arranging to meet him in car parks? Seriously. I got up to a lot of stuff that my parents didn’t know about at 15 but my parents (both of them) were very clear about making sure that I understood consent, safety and why it’s a bad idea to meet men in car parks. H is 15 and she knows that we can find her on social media and that we are aware of what she’s posting, we talk about this stuff. It’s embarrassing for all of us but an uncomfortable conversation is better than a trip to a police station to report rape or sexting or any of the thousands of other things that can happen.

Which leads me straight to this article and this quote from it

I had a very honest conversation with my mum about some of my early sexual experiences, and her response was one of sadness, but not surprise. With only my lousy SRE lessons to help me, I was unable to understand my feelings of discomfort and shame after feeling obliged to have sex. More importantly, I wasn’t equipped with the confidence to say no.

Because you can guess what I’m going to say, can’t you? It was her mother’s job to talk to her about that, it was the job of her parents to equip her with the confidence to say no. Should schools play a role in sex education, yes but I didn’t learn anything about sex in school that my parents hadn’t already discussed with me.

Class war within the Tory Party.

How to parent your adult child. I really need to ask Ma if she’s read this because I’m not sure that I agree with this

We have all met the parent who vocally disapproves of a child’s partner because they are of the wrong sex, class or ethnic background, or the mother or father who has a fixed idea of what success looks like and is disdainful or judgmental of different paths or periods of experimental uncertainty. Almost all parents have struggled with similar feelings, but the important thing is to learn to keep them contained

Parents are allowed to have opinions, especially if they are financially supporting the child in question. I more or less always knew what Ma thought about something I was doing, (still do!) but that didn’t mean that I didn’t do what I wanted to. There needs to be a bit more robustness in parent/child relationships, you don’t always have to agree.

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Quick and Dirty Chocolate Mousse

Posted on March 24, 2016 by nicdempsey

Last week, I came home from the work to find that someone (godchild 2) had left me a pot of chocolate mousse in the fridge.IMG_3954I had heard a lot about this mousse, it had guinness in it but no egg and was really, really simple. H had found it here and decided after making and then tasting it, that it was good but really didn’t need to me make into a cheesecake or have anything else added to it.

After I ate it and I called her to thank her we had a conversation about it, because that’s what we like to do, we like to talk about our cooking and what would make it better. My feeling was that it could do with more cocoa and we both decided that the guinness didn’t add anything, so maybe it could be replaced by coffee to enhance the chocolate flavour.

It’s not elaborate or fancy but it’s a good desert and if you were the sort of person who had people over to dinner and little time to make a pudding, then the 10 minutes it takes to pull it together and then throw it in the fridge, would be time well spent.IMG_3956

What

200g cream cheese

4 tablespoons of cocoa powder

3/4 cup of sugar

1/2 cup of coffee

1 cup double cream

How

  1. Add cream cheese, sugar, cocoa powder and coffee to a bowl and beat until smooth
  2. Add the cream and beat until mixture forms stiff peaks.
  3. Spoon into cups or glasses, you can eat straight away but it’s better if you put it in the fridge for a couple of hours.
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Food and Budget Update: 12/03 to 18/03/2016

Posted on March 22, 2016 by nicdempsey

Tuesdays really seem to swing around quickly now I have a dedicated thing to write about each week.

SHOPPING 

Here are the lists.

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I couldn’t find any packs of peppers without green ones in them so ended up buying a bag of small ones from Tesco when I went to the library, I also bought a butternut squash and a jar of cinnamon. This drove me over budget for a total spend this week of £16.30. Yes the £1.30 will be coming out of next week, it’s not good but I stand by all my purchases!

COOKING AND EATING 

I properly meal prepped this week, getting the 2 week old pineapple chopped and in pots for work snacks before it died and had to be thrown away (I hate waste!). I chopped up the butternut squash and roasted it with onions and the courgette and parsnips that were in the fridge and needed using up. I used some carrots that had built up over the last weeks to make carrot cake muffins. (Some for me, some for work and some to take to Claire and Ryan later in the week!). I made parsley and garlic butter too and I baked a loaf of bread (half white/half wholemeal because I’m all about balance!)

Breakfasts were breakfast wraps. They had egg, roasted vegetables, black beans and a little cheese in them, I made 5 and froze the remaining 3 as I’ll use them when I have a three day work week after Easter!IMG_3926

Lunches were these with a chopped salad of peppers, carrots and mushrooms.IMG_3934Dinners were more interesting, I made a lemon and mushroom orzo with a chicken leg that was fabulous but needs some refinement and less lemon zest and which I completely didn’t take a photo of..

I ate mushrooms on toast because I could and I was tired and it’s a fabulous meal. In a concession to health I also roasted the baby carrots and peppers to have with it..IMG_3932I finished off the last of the osteotomy bean stew, that I made back in October and needed to be rescued from the freezer and eaten or thrown away! That with rice and some of the roasted vegetables was a good dinner.IMG_3933

On St Patrick’s Day, I had last cottage pie that I made after Christmas with peas. This was also a freezer meal and had potato in it and thus Irish (ish). I also had a Guinness because while I don’t do ‘paddywhackery’ or we’re all Irish (I’m not I have Irish grandparents) an excuse to drink Guinness should not be missed!IMG_3936IMG_3935

Friday was a return to sausage and spinach pizza.IMG_3940-0

LESSONS LEARNED

A relearned lesson about how useful I find food preparation at the weekend. It’s not just that it helps make my work week more simple. It seems that a full fridge, frees up space in my head so I can be creative. I can more effectively see what I have in the house that needs to be used and it’s easier to be creative about menu planning for the next week.

Making the carrot cake muffins was nice too because it’s been a while and I promised Sarah something for her  birthday, which it coming up.

 

 

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Life Happened: Alone in the Office

Posted on March 21, 2016 by nicdempsey

After a couple of frankly boring weeks, this last one wasn’t that much more exciting. It was much more organised and so felt better. But it’s probably time to admit that I’m turning into a Hull and my messier, less organised Dempsey traits are slowly being killed off my mother’s more controlling ‘a place for everything and everything in it’s place’ characteristics.

My brother has always claimed that I’m more like our Dad than he is, I certainly did not inherit my mother’s maths brain and I still can’t do a codeword but I have been getting more and more tidy. This week I found myself muttering about people who put their cups in the sink and not on the side, which is a Grandad thing…

I’ve also got a ‘get into work at 8am’ thing going on and have as a result memorised the train times from West Ealing to Paddington in the morning. Ok that’s not any guarantee that that trains will actually turn up on time but I know the time they should be there.

And after the last few weeks of not being as organised as I’d like, this week it felt like I was properly organised, with packed breakfasts and lunches, clothes all sorted and everything else in control!

I took Wednesday afternoon off to take Ryan and Claire to deliver the baby bath and some carrot cakes. It was lovely to see them (I’m not sure that I’ve seen Claire since the wedding) and to find out what’s going on with them other than having a baby in about three weeks time! I could get very used to part time working, it was just lovely to be outside and getting on with things during the day, but this could be because at work I was struggling with minutes (all 18 pages of them so far – it was a long meeting) and because on Thursday and Friday all of my team were on leave, two of them in Dublin!IMG_3935Unless I’m on holiday, Monday to Friday are pretty boring days. I have to take it fairly easy because of work and trying to avoid having a migraine, so it’s work, home, eat, clean, sleep, repeat, not really very exciting.

Friday evening was interesting for me, I met Ma briefly on Friday night (we hit Paddington at more or less the same time!). Then went home for pizza and an early night with a book and a whiskeyIMG_3942On Saturday, Ma and I went to see a very early showing (11:35) of Deadpool, we had free cinema tickets (thanks to Ben and Laura) and a practically empty cinema…and then the rest of the weekend was mine to do with as I wished.  Which aside from some food prep was reading lots and lots of reading! So my perfect weekend really!

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Friday Links

Posted on March 18, 2016 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!  Generally, it’s not been a great week for news, the world seems to be going to hell in a handcart but here are this week’s link’s

Wondering if I need to start calling her Madame Ambassador now.  This is fabulous news and may mean another trip for me to Cote d’Ivoire…

And of course as soon as it’s announced there’s a terrorist attack at Grand Bassam. I’ve been to Grand Bassam and if you were going to launch a terror attack in Cote d’Ivoire, it makes a sick sort of sense. Mostly I’m just sad because Cote d’Ivoire has been through enough and that a bunch of misguided idiots think that this is the work you should do for God.

This recap of one of the Democrat debates is hilarious (no pun intended!)

I’m a proud Londoner but the neglect of the rest of the country by politicians is disgraceful. Well done to The Yorkshire Post for catching Cameron’s PR out and for asking the  hard questions…

The budget’s top priority should be housing. Yes but the Tories won’t do what Labour didn’t. The housing crisis has been years in the making, I’ve been banging on about it for around 20 years…

I saw Stevie Wonder in concert when I was about 16 and it’s still the best gig I have ever been to and he’s gonna be in Hyde Park in the summer. If you haven’t seen him live and can afford it, buy tickets to this!

How Donald Trump happened. I honestly don’t know enough about the US to say whether this is a true assessment or not. I do know that white working class resentment about lack of opportunity, housing and the ability to work does sometimes express itself as racism.

This makes me think about Tabitha. Third culture kids

The benefits of spring cleaning. I like the flat to be tidy because I feel better when it is so this didn’t surprise me…

Our physical surroundings have an incredible impact on how we feel, especially for women. In one study, women who described their homes as being messy or disorderly displayed flatter diurnal slopes of cortisol, an indicator associated with depression and poor coping skills. These women also displayed greater increases in depressed mood throughout the day, greater fatigue in the evening and experienced a more difficult transition from work to home.

Gin revival. Apparently we’re still talking about this!

The magical thinking behind the budget.

The story behind the shamrock shake, or weird things you can get in US McDonalds that you can’t get in the UK (I think it’s been years since I’ve been in a McDonalds and I still haven’t forgiven them for dropping root beer). This is an example of ‘paddywhackery’ that happens around St Patricks Day…

How you should have celebrated St Patrick’s Day…

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Cooking as a chore

Posted on March 17, 2016 by nicdempsey

Yesterday, I went to see Ryan and Claire and deliver a baby bath and some carrot cakes. We talked, Ryan was cleaning the kitchen and I told him that keeping two bottles of champagne upright and exposed to sunlight for over two years wasn’t doing it any favours and it probably needed to be drunk sooner rather than later. And that once opened, fortified spirits should be kept in the fridge not the counter and why did he not know this, had I failed as a godmother?

We talked about other stuff too, cooking and who cooked and how and Ryan talked about how it had taken him a while to figure out recipe instructions, like how much a pinch or a handful actually was. And what the hell was a medium heat. How long should you leave steaks out of the fridge to reach room temperature? Things that I don’t even think about but that Ryan who has been feeding himself for a good 10 years now is only just beginning to learn because he is only just beginning to cook from scratch.IMG_3895Which lead me back to this and the importance of cooking often to get a feel for what works for your cooking and eating style. I haven’t been cooking much new stuff recently because there is nothing like having an upset stomach for putting you off creative cooking but I have been cooking, even if that was just rice and making a loaf of bread. I was struck this week, looking into my fridge and not wanting to cook that my fridge was full of ingredients but not stuff I could eat right now and call a meal. So I cooked mushrooms on toast because that was quick, easy and there wouldn’t be a lot of washing up. It took about 20 minutes, longer than a microwaved ready meal but not a lot of time.OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAA lot of my shopping, cooking and eating is determined by my low budget and high amount of time I have. Some of it is because I like to do certain things (making marmalade doesn’t make me more virtuous than people who buy it, I enjoyed the process) and some of it is about what seems right to me (I have never used a cake mix to bake with because it seems like cheating).

Having said that, I think that I cook because at a formative stage in my life, I saw my mum do it everyday and that’s really where we learn to cook. It was years before I felt confident making a white sauce because that wasn’t something I remember seeing someone do at home and it took me a while to get a feel for it, but I always knew the fundamentals of peeling a potato because I saw Ma do it all the time. What we see happening as children, forms the adults we become and is true in all sorts of ways but especially around food. Obviously we change and develop our skills and tastes and things change according to our circumstances but I can still see a clear line from the food I grew up eating and the food culture of my childhood to the way I cook and eat now.

I’m interested to know if it’s just me, or if other people feel they inherited (or didn’t) a cooking style from their childhood.

 

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Stations of the Cross

Posted on March 16, 2016 by nicdempsey

I’ve talked a bit about my faith in this space before and it’s Lent so I wanted to talk a bit more about what I’m doing in this time but this is my personal perspective, it’s not trying to make anyone feel bad or convert them. This is my space to talk about how I live and this is a part of how I live so I want to talk about it. I don’t want to offend you and if it’s not your thing and you don’t want to read it. Don’t. Come back another day when I’ll probably be talking about food, shopping or my very boring work week!

I knew at the beginning of the year that I needed to spend some time thinking about God and my relationship with God and with my faith community. One of the things I decided to do this Lent was to make some time for reflection and one of the ways I’m doing that is by going through the Stations of the Cross once a week.

When we started going to church, I was about 5 years old and before that my only experience of church was when my aunt took me. What I mostly remember about Church visit was the children’s missal I was given because even then, if there were books involved, I was usually happy. Other fun things were that they gave away money (I know, my aunt was mortified!) and that there were pictures on the columns of the church, the Stations of the Cross.

Later I learnt that this was a Catholic thing. Grandad’s Salvation Army Cory didn’t have Stations of the Cross (they’re methodists!) but it wasn’t until later I realised that CofE churches didn’t have them either.IMG_0575

Although they were always there, during Lent, there was always a big focus on the Stations. When I was a kid Ma would take us to the children’s Good Friday service which because there was no Mass, was the Stations, leading up to the big event of the Crucifixion. This was like the Easter version of the Nativity Play, children with tea towels on their heads walking around the church re-enacting each station but I didn’t go to Catholic school and Ma wasn’t really into that kind of Catholic prayer so that and giving something up was all we really did for Lent. (Ma for all she converted is quite Protestant in her thinking and we were brought up accordingly….)

Then as teenager, I was at a Catholic school and generally more involved in church life (altar server, youth club and preparation for Confirmation) I really began to notice the Lenten focus on the Stations. Every Friday during Lent, we were encouraged at school to do them. There were Stations of the Cross once a week at church, with a different person or group asked to lead the reflections and it influenced how I practiced in Lent.DSCF1635Which is why the first thing I ever did for Grace was a very simple walk around the Church with a reflection on each of the Stations of the Cross, although St Marys didn’t have the Stations on each column and I had to go and stick them up. When I was creating that reflection, I discovered the Scriptural Way of the Cross, which is a new version,  sanctioned by John Paul II, to base them on scriptures. I’m not keen and prefer the traditional ones. This could be because I’m allergic to any reforms made by JPII  but I’ve always thought that the Stations evolved to help us reflect on the deep truths of our lives and our faith and maybe it’s not scriptural to say that Jesus fell three times but I can see why His human failure to carry the Cross and fall three times for three days and the Trinity feels important. Also the new version has less focus on Mary in favour of the beloved disciple and I object to that on principle, the Church neglects Mary (and woman generally) quite enough as it is!

When I wrote the reflections, I wasn’t in a very happy place and there were particular Stations and reflections that I spent a lot of time with. This year I’ve found myself drawn to the end.

Jesus rises from the dead

Empty tomb. Jesus’ followers are really panicking now. What’s happened? Has someone stolen His body? Where is our Lord? He did speak about being raised from the dead, is this what He meant?

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It’s not always how we think it’s going to be but God keeps His promises. We don’t know the details of the plan, we have to trust Him.

Now is the time to thank God for your life and for His love, which is always there for us no matter how far we move from Him.

It’s not always how we think it’s going to be. Story of my life and exactly were I am this year, not where I expected but glad to be here anyway..IMG_2167

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Food and Budget Update: 05/03 to 11/03/2016

Posted on March 15, 2016 by nicdempsey

This was a bad week. Mostly because I had an upset tummy for most of the week.

SHOPPING 

I decided on Saturday that I didn’t really need to shop this week. There seemed to be lots of food hanging about and I only really needed to feed myself for four days. So I decided to use the £15 to shop without a list.

This is what happens when I shop without a plan or a list…. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAOLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

The total was £13.18. My usual basic vegetables of peppers, onions and mushrooms and added courgettes. I topped up with spices to replace some of the lost ones and bought pear drops and polos..

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COOKING AND EATING 

I cooked some rice and vegetables for lunches on Sunday but I started to feel really, really ill on Sunday night and that graduated to vomiting and it wasn’t nice. On Monday, I didn’t eat or drink at all and although I was feeling well enough to go to the office to work, I didn’t feel well enough to eat much. So at work I ate bananas and rice cakes and at home I ate the rice I had cooked on Sunday. I was eating on Thursday and stayed at Ma’s, we had a chicken but on Friday night it all caught up with me and again I didn’t eat anything.

LESSONS LEARNED

You don’t eat much when you have a tummy bug! But more than that, look at how quickly my weekly spending can go on very little.  When I have a list I’ve already done the hard work of planning my eating for the next week and checking what’s on offer, so I can go in and be single minded about what I’m going to buy but without a plan and just on a whim, it’s really easy to rack up the cost…

 

 

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Life Happened: This is getting silly…

Posted on March 14, 2016 by nicdempsey

I caught a bug that involved me being very ill and not being able to eat much.  I did manage to get back to work on Tuesday and was around for the monthly meeting that I minute (5 and half hours of my life I’ll never get back!) That is all you need to know about Monday through Thursday because not much else happened.

On Thursday night I stayed at Ma’s. I gave this to Ma for Christmas and she’s found a place for it above the phone. I think it may just be the family motto..  Ma also uttered the most perfect sentence that summed up the reason behind so many of her life choices on Thursday night. While listening to Chris Stapleton, her current favourite musician she said “I do love a man with with a beard”. I stayed at Ma’s because I had Friday off work so I could recover from the very dull meeting on Thursday and have my haircut. Hurrah for having a fringe I can see through again and also a sunny Friday….
  On Saturday, we went to see Hail Caesar. It was funny but I felt a bit unformed although that could be because I’m still outraged by the cost of a ticket to the cinema £11.79. If you want to know why people don’t go to the cinema as much as they used to, that’s your reason right there.  On Saturday night, it seemed that I’d had a recurrence of the visiting mice. The traps and poison were untouched but there were droppings. So after bleaching everything in the kitchen, I applied wine…
Sunday was a gorgeous sunny day. I did shopping and chores and went to the library. I also spent a lot of time listening to the BBC C2C coverage over Sunday and spoke to Sarah and Ryan.

So the bad start to the week had a good end…

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Friday Links

Posted on March 11, 2016 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday!  It’s been a busy week and I am ready for the weekend! Here are this week’s links….

Is it time to stop caring so much about work?

Living alone is the dream but it can be a nightmare too. No, like living with others there are plus and minuses to living alone. On the one hand, there is no one to disturb your peace and on the other things only happen when you do them.

Boris Johnson puts foot in it again. I really don’t like him, I think he’s a bad mayor and not a great MP but this whole Brexit thing is really beyond it all. He is the mayor of London, telling his staff not to contradict him on a position that isn’t about London but is about his desire to be leader of the Tory Party.

Rough sleeping on the rise. If the number of homeless people sleeping on the street has risen, then the numbers of ‘hidden homeless’ must have risen as well. When I bang on about the housing crisis and benefit cuts, this is why because this is what happens. The housing shortage is not just about middle class millennials not able to afford to buy or having to flat share, it’s about vulnerable people living on the street.

When restoration goes wrong. Thank goodness for English Heritage…

 

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